TRENTON, N.J. – Cory Booker, once mayor of New Jersey’s largest city and now one of the most high-profile, media savvy U.S. senators, declared his candidacy for president Friday, joining an already crowded field of Democrats looking to be President Trump’s 2020 challenger.

Booker announced his long-anticipated decision the same way many Americans have come to know him, on Twitter, presenting himself as a healer of the country’s deep divisions and stressing the importance of “collective action.”

“I believe that we can build a country where no one is forgotten, no one is left behind,” Booker, 49, told his supporters in a rousing, 2-minute-and-25-second video. “It is not a matter of can we, it's a matter of do we have the collective will, the American will? I believe we do.”

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Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) is joining the crowd of Democrats in the run for presidency in 2020. Here are 5 things you should know about the New Jersey senator.
USA TODAY

Coming to prominence as mayor of Newark, then becoming New Jersey’s first African-American senator after winning a special election in 2013 to fill the remainder of the late Sen. Frank Lautenberg's term, Booker can point to a record of backing liberal policies, from marriage equality and abortion rights to marijuana legalization and criminal-justice reform.

In December, Booker was central to a bipartisan effort to pass historic changes to tough-on-crime prison and sentencing laws that then gained Trump’s signature.

But Democrats are wary of Booker’s ties to Wall Street and the pharmaceutical industry, relationships Booker has tried to downplay in recent months by, for example, renouncing contributions from corporate PACs but ones that could hurt him among progressive voters.

Booker joins a diverse field of candidates that probably will swell into one of the most crowded primary contests in Democratic Party history.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, 69, announced in December she was forming an exploratory committee, the first step a presidential hopeful takes before formally declaring. The two-term Massachusetts senator came into the national spotlight for her passionate criticism of Wall Street, the banking industry and large corporations after the 2008 financial crisis.

Two other prominent senators, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Kamala Harris of California, launched campaigns soon thereafter.

In the video announcing his candidacy, Booker recounts his family’s experience breaking the race barrier to buy a home in the New Jersey suburb where he grew up, Harrington Park, and credited that move with setting the stage for the rest of his life — from high school football star to scholarship athlete at Stanford, followed by a Rhodes scholarship, a Yale law degree and his political career.

Booker frames his move to Newark as a way to pay forward the sacrifices made by his parents and notes that he is the only senator who goes home to a “low-income inner-city community.”

Over archival footage of soldiers marching into battle that blend into images of modern-day protests, Booker intones that “we are better when we help each other.”

“The history of our nation is defined by collective action, by interwoven destinies of slaves and abolitionists, of those born here and those who chose America as home, of those who took up arms to defend our country, and those who linked arms to challenge and change it,” Booker says.

“Together, we will channel our common pain back into our common purpose,” he adds. “Together, America, we will rise.”

Sen. Cory Booker, D-NJ, leaves ABC studios in New York after an appearance on The View, Friday, Feb. 1, 2019. Booker on Friday declared his bid for the presidency in 2020 with a sweeping call to unite a deeply polarized nation around a "common purpose." Mark Lennihan, AP

Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), center, president of the South Carolina NAACP chapter, Brenda Murphy, right, and South Carolina Rep. Annie McDonald (D-Fairfield), left, walk up the statehouse steps during the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day at the Dome event on Jan. 21, 2019 in Columbia, South Carolina. Booker was joined at the event by fellow potential Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). Sean Rayford, Getty Images

In this file photo taken on Nov. 4, 2018, US Senator Cory Booker takes a selfie during a rally in support of US Senator Bob Menendez in Hoboken, New Jersey. Booker announced on February 1, 2019, he is running for US president, joining a widening field of Democrats seeking their party's nomination to take on Donald Trump in 2020. Kena Betancur, AFP/Getty Images

In this Oct. 28, 2018, file photo, Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., looks up as he takes a selfie with an attendee after speaking attends at a get out the vote event hosted by the NH Young Democrats at the University of New Hampshire in Durham, N.H. Cheryl Senter, AP

Booker, with Essex County Prosecutor Paula Dow, announces at a news conference in Newark, N.J., on Aug. 9, 2007 the arrest of an unidentified 15-year-old Newark male in connection with the killings of three college students. Mike Derer, AP

In this Jan. 27, 2011, photo, Lakeesha Paylor, left, who worked with Booker to dig cars out from under the snow, gets a hug from the mayor after he helped her dig her vehicle out in Newark, N.J. Julio Cortez, AP

Booker talks during a news conference outside of the Prudential Center on April 4, 2012, in Newark, N.J., about an arbitration ruling in a long-running dispute between the city and the New Jersey Devils' lease at the arena. Julio Cortez, AP

Former senator Bill Bradley listens as Booker speaks during a news conference on his plans to campaign for the Democratic nomination to run for the seat of the late senator Frank Lautenberg on June 8, 2013, in Newark, N.J. Ramin Talaie, Getty Images